


Ever-Changing

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 21:31:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn't matter if they saved the world. The hardest part is what comes afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ever-Changing

_**-Master-**_

The keyblade appears in my hands, and I barely notice I'm doing it, like walking or breathing – it's just an instinct, a reflex.

But now I can't let it be like that. On the other worlds it appeared whenever I was in trouble, so that I could fight the Heartless the way I'm supposed to. But back home, it's different. If a teacher yells at me, or the other team wins at Blitzball, I can't let myself summon it, however much I might want to.

What would everyone say? Only Riku and Kairi even know about it. Not even my mum knows. She'd probably freak out if she found out, especially as she's still recovering from her only son vanishing for almost two years. Knowing he's chosen for something like this might send her over the edge.

That's what life's like for me now: always being careful, trying not to give anything away about where I've been or what I've been doing. Everyone wants to know where there is to disappear to on Destiny Islands. This world's just not big enough for any excuses to work for long.

There was so much space out there. So many places to go, people to meet, things to do. Okay, I was always fighting Heartless, but even that was exciting. If I got bored, there would be something there, even if it was just a Shadow. They weren't exactly thin on the ground.

That sounds so messed up when I put it like that. After fighting those things for so long, you'd think I'd be glad for the break. But now I just want it to be happening all over again. I guess I've gotten so used to my life being one battle after another that now I've no idea how to deal with normality.

Almost two years. That's how long they say we've been gone. Even when you take out the year I spent asleep, it's still long enough to change who you are.

Everything's different now though, not just me. Only the Islands are the same – we always said nothing ever happened here. Everybody's grown up since I left, and most of us have grown apart as well. It's just me, Kairi and Riku now, nobody else around.

And we’re different too. Two years again. Kairi always seems to have her mind on something else these days, like she has to constantly think about what she's saying. Sometimes she relaxes and we almost manage to talk like we used to, but even then there's clearly something she's not saying. Maybe I'll never find out what it is.

As for Riku… Everyone's noticed; that's pretty obvious, even to me. The over-confident, smirking, competitive guy vanished, and then two years later someone older, quieter and, I guess, darker appeared. I keep trying to remember what he used to be like, how we'd have to fight over everything, but it never works. No matter how hard I try, those memories keep bleeding into what happened after the darkness came. It's like Xehanort is still managing to poison things from wherever he is now.

But I could just be searching for something to blame; somebody deliberately making things happen, responsible for anything and everything that’s different. I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to be normal now. Normal people don't have villains or the darkness causing problems, just themselves. The world doesn’t change because things in the dark ordered it, not anymore; it changes because that’s what it does, in ways you don’t notice and can’t stop and never anything as exciting as watching whole worlds restored or travelling through space with your best friends. We were scared, sometimes, but we were having fun. I thought it would never end. All I wanted was to have Kairi and Riku there too.

When I was growing up, I always dreamt about adventures in other places, just so I wouldn't get bored here. I never realised how hard it would be to live a normal life afterwards.

Normal. Just the same as everybody else.

I’m the master of the keyblade, saviour of worlds. 

How am I ever supposed to be normal?

_**-Princess-** _

People always care about the heroes, the ones who run off on some great journey. I don't think anybody ever wants to know about the ones they leave behind.

Because that's what they did to me. Maybe not on purpose, but they still did it. My two best friends were travelling different worlds the way we'd always wanted to, the way we’d planned and promised each other, and I was left on Destiny Islands.

I was never sure if I should hate them or not. Anybody else would, but somehow I never did. I just felt empty, as if I'd lost something important. In the end, that was why I wanted to go looking for them. Just so I could find them.

But then I did, and everything was different. _They_ were different. I remember asking Sora never to change, but in the time he was gone, he did. It wasn't deliberate, but that doesn't matter. He's not the Sora I played with two years ago. He’s not even the Sora who saved me from Maleficent.

He's older. Sadder – not that you’d be able to tell if you hadn’t known him as long as I have. I know he's seen things I can barely imagine, and now he won't talk about them. It used to be that you couldn't make him shut up, but now the real challenge is to get him to talk at all. That is, about what’s really on his mind. At some point he stopped saying everything that comes into his head and he’s not Sora anymore.

It's not just Sora though. Riku's changed so much that I can barely recognise him as the boy he used to be. He was always the oldest, but now he's completely grown up without us, leaving us behind.

Again.

They're both so much older now. They've got different interests, thoughts, feelings… Everything. And I'm still the same as ever. I may have started to grow up on the outside, but inside I feel just the same as I did when it all started, rather than being…I don't know what. Wiser? More mature? What?

I must have changed somehow. If I haven't, I should be able to talk to them like I used to, no matter how changed they are. Inside, they're still the guys I used to know, so I should at least be able to talk to that small part of them.

So why do I feel so strange around them? As if I'm trying to talk to complete strangers, instead of my best friends? 

I hadn't seen them for over a year. I didn’t even remember Sora for a while; that didn’t help. I had to get used to a life without them, had to find other people to talk to, had to go on. But at the same time I wanted them to be there, even pretended I could talk to them. Wouldn't that mean that I'd know what to say when I really did see them?

It's not just talking though. Sometimes I feel awkward, uncomfortable, like I've interrupted something or arrived without being invited. I have to try too hard to carry on a conversation or actually think about what I'm going to say. It's all become so mechanical, as if I'm following set rules instead of doing what feels right.

It won't stay this way though. I won't let it. The Heartless have already taken and destroyed so much, I won't let them do the same to our friendship. It's too important for all three of us.

I know Sora wants to be out there again, following a destiny he doesn't understand. He needs us to give him a reason to stay and stop him when he starts to drift away.

Riku needs us to keep him out here in the light. We're what he thinks of when the darkness starts to get too big for him, so we can't just vanish. If we do, he will too.

And me?

More than anything, I want things to be the way they were before. That can't happen; I know that, so I'll have to settle for what I have.

Sora and Riku are my best friends. I won't let that change along with everything else.

**_-Darkness-_**

I keep thinking I can hear Him in my head – calling me, taunting me, dangling freedom just out of my reach – as if it was only yesterday, not last year. He wasn't even there for that long, a week at most, but it'll feel like it's still going on for years, I know. Maybe even forever.

Sometimes I dream that it's all happening again, but worse. I remember the illusions He conjured, the plans He made, the endless visions He created to force me to realise how hopeless it was to fight. I see Sora trapped as a Heartless, killed by one of his friends – who always varies, but He tended to linger longest over Kairi. That is, when she wasn’t being trapped forever with the rest of the Princesses, suffering so many fates I lost count long ago. 

Once I dreamt about Beast ripping Belle to shreds and eating her heart. I woke up retching.

He never imagined losing, so I don't see that. Instead, the door opens and darkness flows out, joining with Him. The Heartless follow it, at His beck and call, to do with as He desires.

Sometimes Destiny Islands appear, to be torn apart by the darkness all over again, or as I left it, just a shadow left by the darkness that overran it.

So many people died that day. And no one knows that it was my fault.

When I wake up, I never know where I am. All I see is darkness all around me, and I assume that I'm back there. I try to open a door out, but it never comes – not since Xemnas supposedly faded away and I was told that I didn't belong there anymore.

I betrayed the light and was cast out by the dark. No wonder I ended up in twilight, _between_. No matter how much I talk about the dawn, I'm just the same as the Nobodies, only worse, because I have a heart; I had a choice.

In a way, I felt closer to them than anybody else. When I pretended to be one, it felt more like finally becoming who I really was. Maybe because I knew that they could feel the darkness inside the same way I could.

That hasn't changed now. I'll be at home, doing homework, or at school, walking between classes, and it'll suddenly hit me. It's like a hole opens in front of me, just like the doors I used to make, only instead of me going in, darkness comes out. And then I feel myself respond, as a part of me recognises it and tries to join with it again. However much I try to go to the light, something keeps dragging me back. There's something inside me – if I want to make excuses, avoid the responsibility again – pulling me away from what I want and towards what _it_ wants.

I pretend it doesn't happen. If Sora or Kairi ask, I just smile and say everything's fine. My hair means they can't see my eyes if I don't want them to, so they can't tell that I'm lying to them.

About the dreams.

About the darkness.

About how, in a way, I miss it.

It should have been the worse time of my life: lost to the darkness, as everyone so melodramatically put it. But it wasn't. I didn't feel lost or trapped, I felt…free.

After being stuck on this world for so long, I could go wherever I wanted. Most people avoided me, thinking I was one of the bad guys, and I could portal away when I got bored or in trouble. It may have come at too high a cost, but I got the freedom that I had wanted for all of those years.

Now I'm trapped on these Islands again, but it's worse now. I know what it's like to just be able to hop from one world to another, but I can't leave this one. No doors, no portals, no ships; not even any stupid rafts. I go to school, I live what life there is here, and the whole time I just want to be back out there,

I can't be trusted. I know that now. I can never be trusted, because there will always be a part of me that wants the darkness. And because the rest of me will always want that freedom back, I won't fight it.

I have to force myself to stay. I think of Sora and Kairi, and it gets that little bit easier, for a while. It never lasts, but that small amount of time is usually enough.

But if they left… 

I'd go. Not back to Ansem (or Xehanort, or whoever he really was in the end), but back into the darkness.

The light lets Sora do what he wants, but only the darkness sets me free. 

I want it back.


End file.
